…the United States is actually more dependent on rich people to pay taxes than even many of the more socialized economies of Europe. According to the Tax Foundation, the United States gets 45 percent of its total taxes from the top 10 percent of tax filers, whereas the international average in industrialized nations is 32 percent. America’s rich carry a larger share of the tax burden than do the rich in Belgium (25 percent), Germany (31 percent), France (28 percent), and even Sweden (27 percent). ~ Washington Times
To set the stage for lowering taxes and Mitt Romney’s tax plan — the rich… the American rich specifically, pay the most taxes when compared to the rest of the world
This lack of understanding by the left leads to how they fight and lie and misrepresent what Mitt Romney says and will even twist other peoples work to win the day:
Last night, the Obama campaign blasted out another email claiming that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would either require raising taxes on the middle class or blowing a hole in the deficit. “Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class taxes,” said the Obama campaign press release. “In fact, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Princeton economist Harvey Rosen both concede that paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require large tax increases on families making between $100,000 and $200,000.”
But that’s not true. Princeton professor Harvey Rosen tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email that the Obama campaign is misrepresenting his paper on Romney’s tax plan:
I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work. It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal. The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.
In 1987, Jean-Marie Le Pen called the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps “just a detail in the history of World War II.” Explaining himself a few years later, the head of France’s National Front said: “If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail.”
Such remarks cemented Mr. Le Pen’s reputation as Europe’s leading fascist. So what was one to make of the reception accorded the publication, in 1994, of “The Age of Extremes,” by the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm?
The book—subtitled “a history of the world, 1914-1991″—was hailed as “bracing and magisterial” by the New York Times. “Facts roll off Hobsbawm’s pages like thunderbolts,” gushed the New Republic. But search the index, and the words “Holocaust” and “Auschwitz” never appear. Nazi concentration camps get about 10 or 15 lines. As for the Soviet gulags, Hobsbawm devoted exactly two paragraphs to them.
Hobsbawm, who died in London Monday at age 95, was no Holocaust denier. Nor was he ignorant of the human toll imposed by communism, the ideology to which he remained faithful nearly his whole life. He acknowledged that the victims of Stalin’s tyranny “must be measured in eight rather than seven digits,” adding that the numbers are “shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification.”
Yet Hobsbawm did justify them. “Like military enterprises which have genuine popular moral legitimacy, the breakneck industrialization of [Stalin’s] first Five-Year Plans (1929-41) generated support by the very ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ it imposed on the people,” he wrote. “Difficult though it may be to believe, the Stalinist system . . . almost certainly enjoyed substantial support.”
The rest of the book is shot through with similar rationalizations. That included the observation that “for most Soviet citizens the Brezhnev era spelled not ‘stagnation’ but the best times they and their parents, or even grandparents, had ever known.” As for Soviet dissidents, they were “anti-plebeian” elitists who “found themselves up against Soviet humanity as well as Soviet bureaucracy.”
None of this should have been surprising coming from a man who, over the years, gave his political assent to everything from the Nazi-Soviet Pact to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Asked by the BBC whether the achievement of a communist utopia would have justified “the loss of fifteen, twenty million people,” he answered “Yes.”
Yet what are we to make of the warmth with which Hobsbawm is now being eulogized? Only this: That the world is far from recognizing that the crimes of communism were no less monstrous than those of Nazism. In treating the gulag as a detail of his history, Hobsbawm proved himself to be the moral equivalent of Mr. Le Pen. And in treating Hobsbawm as a paragon among historians, his admirers prove they’ve learned nothing from history itself.
Since I have been vacationing and catching up with work since getting back, I will deal only with one point from each article by John Van Huizum. (Click to increase size):
The left has placed on American the most regulations decreasing our freedom. It is simple, as government gets large, it regulates more. So as California gets more liberal, it will regulate many more aspects of our lives. For instance, I do not think john is tracking with the purpose (ultimately) for smart meters. Here in our state (John and mine) the “green economy” is tacking root, and the smart meters in the eye’s of the cultural left that accept the “fact” of anthropogenic global warming want to reduce energy usage. One way is to control temperatures at thermostats, one blogger discusses this proposal:
There was also a proposal in California to require utilities to use smart meters to control the thermostat in people’s homes, which would facilitate controlling air conditioning and heating loads, especially when there was a need to shave load during periods of peak usage. Thus far, this bad idea hasn’t been adopted. If the utility can control the thermostat in people’s homes, it’s conceivable government could mandate the high and low temperatures in people’s homes.
The left love to manifacture crisis’ and then exploit them for all the legislative power they can ring out of it:sexual harassment; nuclear power; anorexia; second-hand smoke; heterosexual AIDS; swine flu; silicone breast implants; homelessness in America; hunger in America; peanuts; man-made global warming, etc. etc. One author points out that many of the myths from the left are not only legislatively disastrous, but the death of millions of black are on the hands of the left:
Ecological myths have equal staying power. Despite evidence to the contrary, stories of global warming, deadly dioxin, dying forests, demonic DDT, rejuvenation by recycling, and the evils of electric fields continue to gain adherents. Green mythology holds that white technology is destroying the planet. Only with the elimination of Western evils like the internal combustion engine and chemicals can we recover the health and happiness that flow from living as one with nature.
Because the Left banned DDT, millions have died:
Dennis Prager as well talks about how the left intrudes on our freedom:
So far from the power company intruding into our lives because of greed, they are merely adopting the Left’s view of global warming and government intrusion into which light-bulbs we can use, or at what temperature we should set our air-conditioner (and if too cool, we have to pay more to buy carbon offsets).
John seems to misunderstand what Social Security is suppose to be. Putting your money away and getting it back. Today it is putting your money in, the large government using it in ways it shouldn’t, and then relying on future generations to support you with their money. John’s last sentence is his tell, and the cultural Lefts Achilles heel. I have already pointed this gulf in our conflict of visions out, but I will post it again:
Progressivism is an ideology based on the idea that historical and social progress are inevitable. The idea of progress assumes movement toward some ideal or end that usually includes the perfectibility of human, nature and human society. Progressives conceive of this end in various ways: history may culminate in an era of absolute freedom, social and economic equality, or some form of utopia.
Here is more on this idea in quotes from Thomas Sowell:
My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause [the French Revolution], but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter of January 3, 1793, The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), p. 465; from, Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 29.
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According to Adam Smith, it is when the businessman “intends only his own gain” that he contributes— via the process of competition— to promote the social good “more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” Smith added: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”
Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 57.
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Christianity is closely tied to the success of capitalism,[1] as it is the only possible ethic behind such an enterprise. How can such a thing be said? The famed economist/sociologist/historian of our day, Thomas Sowell, speaks to this in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. He whittles down the many economic views into just two categories, the constrained view and the unconstrained view.
The constrained vision is a tragic vision of the human condition. The unconstrained vision is a moral vision of human intentions, which are viewed as ultimately decisive. The unconstrained vision promotes pursuit of the highest ideals and the best solutions. By contrast, the constrained vision sees the best as the enemy of the good— a vain attempt to reach the unattainable being seen as not only futile but often counterproductive, while the same efforts could have produced a more viable and beneficial trade-off. Adam Smith applied this reasoning not only to economics but also to morality and politics: The prudent reformer, according to Smith, will respect “the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people,” and when he cannot establish what is right, “he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong.” His goal is not to create the ideal but to “establish the best that the people can bear.”[2]
Dr. Sowell goes on to point out that while not “all social thinkers fit this schematic dichotomy…. the conflict of visions is no less real because everyone has not chosen sides or irrevocably committed themselves.” Continuing he points out:
Despite necessary caveats, it remains an important and remarkable phenomenon that how human nature is conceived at the outset is highly correlated with the whole conception of knowledge, morality, power, time, rationality, war, freedom, and law which defines a social vision…. The dichotomy between constrained and unconstrained visions is based on whether or not inherent limitations of man are among the key elements included in the vision.[3]
The contribution of the nature of man by the Judeo-Christian ethic is key in this respect. One can almost say, then, that the Christian worldview demands a particular position to be taken in the socio-economic realm.* You can almost liken the constrained view of man in economics and conservatism as the Calvinist position. Pulitzer prize winning political commentator, Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), makes the above point well:
At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.[4]
A free market, then, is typically viewed through the lenses of the Christian worldview with its concrete view of the reality of man balanced with love for your neighbor;
…the super rich ALSO can contribute to the economy, but the greater number of the others contribute a lot more.
Sometimes you just bang your head on the desk because of the ignorance some people have. The Wall Street Journal clears up the confusion, especially since the media latched onto Mitt Romney paying only 15% in taxes:
Mitt Romney’s disclosure this week that his effective federal tax rate is “probably closer to the 15% rate than anything” has created the predictable political uproar. The White House and its media allies figure they’ve now got their stereotype of the Monopoly man, albeit without his cane and top hat, who they can crush in their planned class-warfare campaign.
We’re not sure if facts will matter in this cacophony, but someone should at least try to introduce a little reality into the debate, especially since Mr. Romney seems so unprepared to make the case.
Start with the fact that, like Warren Buffett, Mr. Romney said he makes most of his money from investments, not wages or salary. Thus his income is really taxed twice: once at the corporate tax rate of 35%, then again at a 15% tax rate when it is passed through to him as dividends or via capital gains from the sale of stock.
All income from businesses is eventually passed through to the owners, so to ignore business taxes creates a statistical illusion that makes it appear that the rich pay less than they really do. By this logic, if the corporate tax rate were raised to, say, 60% from today’s 35% and the dividend and capital gains tax were cut to zero, it would appear that business owners were getting away with paying no federal tax at all.
This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.
The Congressional Budget Office recently examined the distribution of federal taxes on various income groups. The report was ballyhooed by liberals as proof of rising income inequality, but that argument is for another day. What everyone has ignored is what CBO found about the relative taxes paid by different groups. And, lo, the rich pay more, which is probably why the press didn’t report it.
The nearby table from the CBO report shows that in 2007 the average income tax rate paid by the 1% was 18.8%, compared to 4.2% for Americans in a broadly defined middle class from the 21st to 80th income percentiles. The poorest 20% on average paid a net negative income-tax rate of 5.6% because of the checks they receive for tax credits that are “refundable.” These are essentially transfer payments redistributing income from the rich and middle class to the poor.
As for all federal taxes, CBO found that in 2007 the top 1% paid an average rate of a little under 30%, compared to 15.1% for middle-income earners. In calculating this overall tax burden, CBO takes account of payroll taxes, which moves the rate of the lowest 20% of earners into positive territory at 4.7%. CBO also apportions to individuals who are shareholders the tax that corporations pay on corporate profits.
State Controller John Chaing continues to uphold the California Great Seal Motto of “Eureka”, i.e., ‘I have found it’. But what Chaing is finding as Controller is that California’s economy as measured by tax revenues is still tanking. Compared to last year, State tax collections for February shriveled by $1.2 billion or 22%. The deterioration is more than double the shocking $535 million reported decline for last month. The cumulative fiscal year decline is $6.1 billion or down 11% versus this period in 2011.
While California Governor Brown promises strong economic growth is just around the corner, Chaing proves that the best way for Sacramento politicians to hurt the economy and thereby generate lower tax revenue, is to have the highest tax rates in the nation.
California politicians seem delusional in their continued delusion that high taxes have not savaged the State’s economy. Each month’s disappointment is written off as due to some one-time event.
The State Controller’s office did acknowledge that higher than normal tax refunds for February might have reduced the collection of some personal income taxes. Given that 2012 has an extra day in February for leap year, there might have been one day more of tax refunds sent out. But the Controller’s report shows personal income tax collections fell by $325 million, or 16% versus last year. Furthermore, leap year would have added another day for retail sales and use tax collection, but those revenues also fell during February-by an even larger $813 million, 25% decline from 2011.
The more likely reason tax collections continue falling is that businesses and successful people are leaving California for the better tax rates available in more pro-business states.
Derisively referred to as “Taxifornia” by the independent Pacific Research Institute, California wins the booby prize for the highest personal income taxes in the nation and higher sales tax rates than all but four other states. Though Californians benefit from Proposition 13 restrictions on how much their property tax can increase in one year, the state still has the worst state tax burden in the U.S.
Spectrum Locations Consultants recorded 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state in 2011, 26% more than in 2010 and five times as many as in 2009. According SLC President, Joe Vranich: the “top ten reasons companies are leaving California: 1) Poor rankings in surveys 2) More adversarial toward business 3) Uncontrollable public spending 4) Unfriendly business climate 5) Provable savings elsewhere 6) Most expensive business locations 7) Unfriendly legal environment for business 8) Worst regulatory burden 9) Severe tax treatment 10) Unprecedented energy costs.
Rep. Chaka Fattah’s assertion on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show last night has received plenty of derision. Instapundit calls it “banking on the moocher vote,” and Twitter pundit Keder derisivelynotes, “Democrats would rather give you freebie ‘benefits’ then do anything useful that might actually help you find a job. I know this may be hard for @TheDemocrats to understand, but the unemployed don’t want ‘benefits.’ They want jobs.” Unfortunately, that may all be true, but that doesn’t make Fattah wrong, either:
Is Your Vote for Sale? Obama campaigns as if he is certain that your vote is for sale, and all he has to do is come up with some taxpayer-financed freebies for you. First it was free contraceptives for everyone, as if your vote could be bought by a condom. Then it was cut rate student loans, which was always a fraudulent issue. It was the Democrats that provided for the interest rates to double on new student loans issued after July of this year, years ago when they had majority control of Congress. House Republicans already voted through a bill to continue the lower rates, financed by cutting government spending elsewhere. But Obama and Senate Democrats have refused to consider any House passed bill financed by reduced government spending, defining the difference between the two parties today. The Democrats demand record taxes or record borrowing to finance record spending, which is what we have got today.
If you are in need of basic necessities with no immediate alternative, then taking public assistance from a safety net program is not morally objectionable. Or if you have paid into a program over the years in return for the benefits, as with Social Security and Medicare, then you cannot be faulted for taking the benefits. But selling your vote to whoever promises you the most free benefits at taxpayer expense is a perversion of democracy, really just a sophisticated version of organized crime. You should not be living at the expense of the taxpayers or your neighbors if you are not in serious need.
That is not what American democracy has been all about. Our Founding Fathers emphasized repeatedly that a functional democracy required a virtuous people. This is what they were talking about, people having the virtue and good sense not to look to sell their vote to whoever bid the most freebies at taxpayer expense for it. They knew that politicians campaigning on free bread and circuses at someone else’s expense had historically been the downfall of democracies in the past. And we are on track for that today as well, if we fall for Obama’s Third World vision of democracy as voter bribery.
What students need more than a cut rate student loan is a job that will enable them to pay back the loan. But over half of recent college graduates do not have jobs. What young working people need is not a free condom but the freedom to pursue the American Dream and traditional American prosperity. They will not get that, however, from Obama’s Hugo Chavez economy.
[….]
The 99 Percent vs. The 1 Percent Since when has it been considered just for the bottom 99 percent to say to the top 1 percent, “We can outvote you to take your money”? That is a politics of piracy and theft, with no roots in American history.
Sure the richest can be validly asked to bear proportionally more of the overall tax burden because they can do so with the least harm. But before President Obama was even elected, official IRS data shows that in 2007 the top 1 percent of income earners paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes, almost twice their share of adjusted gross income. The top 5 percent paid 60.6 percent of all federal income taxes, while earning 37.7 percent of adjusted gross income. The top 10 percent paid 71.2 percent of all income taxes, while earning 48 percent of adjusted gross income.
By contrast, the bottom 95 percent of income earners paid 39.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of income earners paid more federal income taxes than the bottom 95 percent combined!
Moreover, in 2007, again before President Obama was even elected, the bottom 40 percent of income earners as a group paid no federal income taxes. Instead, they received net payments from the income tax system equal to 3.8 percent of all federal income taxes. In other words, they paid negative 3.8 percent of federal income taxes. The middle 20 percent of income earners, the actual middle class, paid 4.7 percent of all federal income taxes.
What this adds up to is that even before President Obama was elected America already maintained the most progressive income tax system in the western world, maybe the entire world. Moreover, that was the result of almost 30 years of Reagan Republican supply-side economics that began with Reagan and Jack Kemp in the 1970s and 1980s, continued through Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America, and further played out with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. When President Reagan brought his supply-side economics to Washington in 1981, the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 1 percent was 17.6 percent. After a quarter century of rate cuts, that share had more than doubled by 2007 to 40.4 percent, as noted above. That is because with the lower tax rates, incomes boomed along with the economy, and high income taxpayers had the incentives to pull their money out of tax shelters and invest it in the real economy, fueling the boom while increasing their reported income. But so-called Progressives (we should start calling them throwbacks instead) can’t understand these dynamics of modern capitalism.
The following comes from a discussion elsewhere on the Web, and should serve as a great reminder to the deleterious effects of larger (more regulatory) government vs. a smaller form of it:
The main point is that one party has people in it that are for small government — people like Ron Paul, Larry Elder, and the late Milton Friedman (a libertarian “god” of sorts). In the other you have people who want to grow government larger, and larger, and larger. California is a microcosm of the effect this has on businesses and regulating people’s lives. However, this drive to regulate people and their lives and to grow government, has, in every case, increased the possibility of government intrusion by force into the lives of ordinary people, which increase the risk (again, this is provable in history) of detention and death.
Which is why most libertarians vote Republican, they want smaller government. A great example is the housing market crisis. Some people are under the impression this was caused due to an easing of regulation. Not true. In fact, it was government-regulating banks to loan to people it would previously not. Why is this? Because the left wants [material] equality, the right wants people to prosper. One offers the most freedom, the other forces one person to pay for another. Here is an a small sampling of 2012 regulations from California that is helping businesses make the choice in moving to other states:
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In addition to mandatory insurance coverage, eligible female employees can take four months pregnancy disability leave, under provisions of SB 299.
The independent contractor law, SB 459, is worth discussing with a legal or h/r expert, because the rules are so tough and potentially expensive. That $5,000 to $25,000 fine is PER INCIDENT.
Employees can take up to 30 business days in a year for donating organs or bone marrow. SB 272 clarifies the law a bit.
Company dress codes must accommodate transvestites and cross dressers under AB 887.
Companies operating in multiple states must offer the same insurance coverage for same-sec couples and domestic partners as they do married couples in California.
Five new laws change workers compensation insurance. Check with your insurance carrier.
Everything the growth in government touches (which is typically from the left… or, the right embracing the foundational thinking of the left [like Bush working with Kennedy to increase the size and focus of the Dept of Education]). This regulation causes friction between government and regular people. As more and more regulations are added, the increase in the possibility of armed persons coming to your door increases — like this example of natural foods markets being raided: REASON TV Rawesome Foods Raided… Again!
So persons that *REALLY* want to effect the political spectrum and possibly decrease the size of the government the most would want to vote Republican (like Milton Friedman, Larry Elder, and Rand Paul [Ron Paul’s son]). And this decreases the abrasive aspect of government and the regular Joe meeting. Congress — for instance – should meet for 3-months during the year, and do less of this:
“Federal agencies publish an average of over 200 pages of new rulings, regulations, and proposals in the Federal Register each business day. That growth of the federal statute book is one of the clearest measures of the increase of the government control of the citizenry…” James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martins Griffen; 1994), 1.
“All forms of the liberal agenda interfere with the rational relationship between human action and the conditions of life by disconnecting outcomes from adaptive behavior. Government welfare programs of all kinds disconnect the receipt of material benefits from productive behavior and voluntary exchange, and from those normal developmental processes that lead to adult competence. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other federal and state welfare programs divorce an individual’s material security and emotional well being from his economic and social connections to his community, and replace them with a marriage to government officials. In particular, welfare programs disconnect the individual’s security and well being from two of his most reliable resources: his own initiative in producing and exchanging with others, and his social bonds to members of his family, church, neighborhood or village. The liberal agenda’s takeover of countless individual and community functions, from early education to care of the elderly, has had the effect of alienating the individual from his community and robbing both of their essential mutuality. In the economic sphere, especially, the liberal agenda’s rules have become strikingly irrational. Countless restrictions dictate what the ordinary businessman and professional may or may not do regarding hiring procedures, sales and purchasing, health insurance plans, retirement plans, safety precautions, transportation policies, racial and ethnic quotas, immigration matters, liability rules, and provisions for the handicapped. Endless paperwork adds to the already crushing burden of confiscatory taxation. Licensure requirements needlessly prevent workers from entering new fields in which they are willing to work hard and risk much in order to make life better for themselves and their families. Unnecessary and unjust restrictions in the freedom with which individuals can run their economic lives are the hallmarks of the liberal agenda. But the social pathology of collectivism extends well beyond the economic realm. While children can be happy in dependent relationships with parents, adults cannot be happy in any mature sense in dependent relationships with government welfare programs, no matter how well intentioned or administered. The reasons for this are developed more thoroughly below and occupy a major portion of this book. Stated briefly, however, the large-scale dependency of the adult citizen on governments is always inherently pathological and always profoundly detrimental to…” Lyle H. Rossiter, The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, p. 71.
Cal Watchdog adds to the idea with the most recent businesses leaving:
Waste Connections, a Folsom-based garbage hauling and landfill company, said last week it is busting a move for Texas. Santa Barbara-based Superconductor Technologies Inc., which develops advanced superconducting wire, also confirmed this week it is leaving for the Lone Star State.
After California’s ongoing budget imbroglio, there is arguably no greater crisis facing our once Golden State than the continuing exodus of homegrown companies like Waste Connections and Superconductor Technologies. Yet, lawmakers in Sacramento are doing next to nothing about it.
In fact, Waste Connections CEO Ron Mittlestaedt actually warned state officials back in August that his company was thinking about relocating to another state. Those officials failed to step up and dissuade the Sacramento region’s largest publicly traded company from leaving. Higher Taxes
Mittlestaedt echoed the lament of all too many California CEO’s that the state is inhospitable for business. It “has the highest tax rates in the nation,” he told the Sacramento Bee this week, “and they’re going higher.” And California is not only fiscally broke, he said, but also “structurally.”
By that, he was referring to the state’s hostile regulatory environment. As when the Legislature this year neglected to pass a measure that would have made it easier for Waste Connections and other landfill operators to move trash around the state, while doing no harm to the environment.
Superconductor Technologies CEO Jeff Quiram said in a statement that the company’s goal of becoming “a leader in the superconducting wire industry recently reached the inflection point where it was time to make a move.”
Translation: The cost, the hassle of doing business in California has risen to such a level that aspiring companies like STI cannot grow their businesses the way they can in competing states….
Failed Policy: The Nobel Prize for Economics goes to two Americans who have separately exposed the flaws in government stimulus spending. For a Keynesian president, it’s the Anti-Peace Prize.
When President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office, detractors said it was for doing nothing.
That can’t be said for Thomas Sargent of New York University and Princeton’s Christopher Sims, whose macroeconomics work has been of invaluable help to central bankers and other economic policymakers, and for which they now share this year’s economics Nobel.
Sargent’s discoveries in particular echo the rationale Republican leaders in Congress have presented in opposing the massive Democratic stimulus spending during the first two years of the Obama administration — that such spending seeks to give the economy nothing more than what House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan over the weekend aptly called a “sugar high.”
I have been a fan of Daniel Hannan for a while, but I think with the looming failure of the E.U. enterprise of borrow-borrow-borrow (similar to ours), this is a fitting post from him:
We are approaching end-game. Greece is supposed to pay off its next tranche of debts on 17 October, and the markets are now expecting what this blog has long predicted: a large-scale default. It is conceivable that another rescue package will be put together, and the collapse deferred for a few more months. Either way, though, Europe’s banks are staring at a Lehman moment. This is the tempest long foretold, slow to make head but sure to hold.
All the options now are bad. The least bad is a swift and orderly unbundling of the euro, allowing Greece and the other peripheral countries to devalue and begin exporting their way back to growth. The worst is to deny reality, to stagger on as now, and so to ensure that the catastrophe is all the more terrible when it comes. No prizes for guessing which option Brussels wants.
Shakespeare, as I never cease to remark, has something to say about every subject, including the way Eurocrats have brought this calamity upon themselves:
The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!
This lack of understanding by the left leads to how they fight and lie and misrepresent what Mitt Romney says and will even twist other peoples work to win the day:
